A community in Massachusetts has been forced to close its youth baseball complex after hazardous materials, including glass shards, heavy metals and now-banned PCBs, were found in the soil.
According to the Cape Cod Times, tests of Falmouth’s John L. Neill Youth Baseball Complex were performed by Arcadis, a town-hired consultant. The tests reveal that the soil contains concentrations of lead, arsenic, zinc, and polychlorinated biphenyls that exceed state limits spelled out in the Massachusetts Contingency Plan, which guides environmental cleanups.
Town manager Michael Renshaw said last week that the problem surfaced during the installation of new facility lighting, which are part of ongoing improvements funded by the town's Community Preservation Committee. Contractors dug into the ground to set the light poles and churned up soil from a forgotten municipal dump.
The town had hired Arcadis in November to analyze the soil and find out what was in it after contractor CDM Smith and its subcontractor noticed metal and glass. Arcadis learned that the property was home to a municipal landfill up until the early 1970s.
Officials don't know how long the shutdown, announced Monday, may continue at the complex at 525 Gifford St., even as the Falmouth Youth Baseball that uses the complex begins registrations for the 2025 season.
"The landfill stopped being used in the early '70s from the research that the consultant was able to put together," he said, and at some point, in the early to mid '80s, "the town made the decision to go ahead and construct this ballfield complex on top of it."
